Controlling Tomato Horn Worms Organically

I was recently asked about organic solutions to tomato hornworm infestations. They can be controlled through hand picking, thinking like an ecosystem, using crop rotation and soil solarization, as well as growing super productive tomatoes that can tolerate some predation.

Hand picking is often all you need to do. Go out after dark or before dawn with a flash light. Horn worms, slugs, and many other pests do most of their feeding in the dark. You can carry an empty plastic container of some kind, like what peanut butter or yogurt comes in. It will need to be big enough to contain all your “finds.” Then simply pick the creatures off the plants, drop them in the container and put the lid on. If you have chickens, ducks, or guineas--offer them your finds. You will soon learn which sorts of pests they will be happy to devour and which they detest. (By the way, guineas and runner ducks are supposed to get along very well with gardens—you could simply let them into the garden when pests get out of hand, and they will devour the bugs and slugs. Chickens are a little more problematic, leave them in the garden a minute too long, and they will eat your plants down to the roots. ) If you don’t have hungry birds, the container can be left in a sunny place for a few hours, or the contents can be dropped into a bucket of water. These pests are high in nitrogen so consider adding them to the materials used in the compost hole method: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124895&id=588082483

When you think like an ecosystem, you know that every source of protein and be eaten by something. This is as true for tomato horn worms as it is for any other pests. Toads, wasps, and skunks are your friends--they will search out tomato hornworms and devour them. Skunks might seem a little hard to live with, but if you talk softly and avoid sudden movements when they are around, they grow accustomed to your presence and generally make good neighbors. Loud noises and sudden movement, on the other hand, can trigger their well known defenses.

As crazy as it may sound, wasps also like to be talked to softly, and they dislike sudden movements. When a wasp flies up near you, hold still and let it “scan” you. It will fly back and forth and up and down very close to you, and memorize what you look and smell like. It might even land on your hand or shirt briefly and walk around. If you are calm and quiet, there are usually no negative consequences. They learn who lives near them and can tell friend from foe. I once had a wasp nest over my door, and my son and I, as well as our friends, came and went without any problem. But one day a neighbor came to the door and started yelling and the wasps all flew down and chased her away. Having wasps for friends’ pays very nice dividends. Wasps’ most favorite food is caterpillars. They will seek tomato hornworms, chew them into pieces, and carry any pieces they don’t immediately devour back to their nests for their young. I find wasps to be very lovable neighbors for a number of reasons.

Toads are great in the garden also. They eat caterpillars, slugs, and many other garden pests. Like all wildlife, they prefer slow movements and soft voices. However, unlike skunks who will most likely make their home in a wild place, and wasps who can make their homes just about any place, toads may need you to design some habitat just for them. For more information on developing toad habitat see my article: “Hedging for Amphibians.” http://harvestsgardeningsecrets.blogspot.com/2010/11/hedging-for-amphibians.html

Crop rotation can help control tomato hornworms. Plant your tomatoes as far as you can from the spot where the tomato hornworms bothered them last. The hornworm pupa over winter in the soil. When spring arrives the moths emerge and lay their eggs on your young plants to start the cycle all over again. If you have enough room to let some of the garden be fallow for a few months, do a little research on soil solarization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_solarization If you set up your solarization in the fall, or before it gets warm in the late winter or early spring, it should rid your ground of the horn worms you have now. However, the adults can still fly in and lay eggs. Some people find that planting garlic and basil can help detour the moths. But this only works if the local population is not too high. The moths’ biological imperative is to find an appropriate home for the next generation. If there is lots of competition for those homes they will hunt for good spots all the harder.

Last but not least you can try growing some super tomato plants that can produce enough food for you and the hornworms. Start with the compost hole method mentioned above: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124895&id=588082483 Tomatoes thrive on soil prepared in this way. Choose indeterminate heirlooms (see: http://www.tomatofest.com/tomato-questions.html for more information on what this means) and don’t pinch them back or prune them unless it is really necessary (your hornworms will take care of the pruning for you). These tomatoes can out grow a moderate horn worm infestation. You may still need to do some hand picking—and encourage predators is always a good idea, but there should be enough for everyone. (This is exactly what I did last year. Even with a moderate hornworm infestation, by the end of the summer I was pruning armloads of new growth off the tomato plants every week. There was more than enough for everyone!)

If you have any questions, tips, or comments--please feel free to share them here, on my face book photo albums, or on any of my face book threads. You will need to send me a face book friend request, before you can comment there, but I do generally add everyone who asks.

Happy gardening!

Copyright 2011, Harvest McCampbell

Digging the Dirt / March in the Garden

This originally appeared in The Two River's Tribune as one of my monthly garden columns. Unfortunately I am not certain which year.

Digging the Dirt / March in the Garden

March is the beginning of the gardening year for many folks. It is time to beginning thinking about where you want to place your new garden or flower beds, do any last minute pruning of roses and perennials, and get ready to start seeds for all the glorious summer flowers and vegetables. One of the hardest things about these beguiling weeks of mild, pre-spring weather is that it can turn freezing cold at the snap of a finger. Fortunately, there are plants that can be planted right now and take a freeze; but first, you might want to prepare new planting beds.

New Beds with Less Work

The easiest technique for starting new beds comes to us from the proponents of no till gardening. All you have to do is mark out where your new beds will be placed, mow, cut, or pull any weeds, smooth any displaced soil, cover with any soil amendment(s) of your choice (compost, composted manure, coffee ground; or kelp, bone, or blood meal, etc.), cover the beds with newspaper or cardboard, and lastly cover with a layer of mulch. Your mulch can be shredded plant material from your garden, from the local tree service, sawdust from one of our local mills, or fluffed up straw from a local feed, garden, or hardware store. Shredded bark or bark chips also work well and can last a long time, but they will cost you a bit more to start with.

When you get ready to plant your home grown or nursery purchased seedlings, simply pull back the mulch, cut through the card board or newspaper, use a trowel to make a small planting hole, tuck in your seedling, and scrunch the mulch back over the newspaper or cardboard.

Reduce Slugs before they Reduce Your Seedlings

Before planting your seedlings, you might want to take a few slug reduction measures. Flat beer, placed in repurposed wide mouth plastic bottles, works wonders. Just pour a few of inches of beer into your bottle and use some mulch to prop them up on their sides. The slugs crawl in and they don’t crawl out. When there is no more room in the tavern, you can pull back your mulch and pour the stale beer and slugs out on the ground. Give them a decent burial under your mulch, and get the tavern open for business as soon as possible.

Magazines and slick newspaper inserts make handy slug traps. For each trap you want one or two pages of slick paper. Simply fold the sheets in quarters, make a hole in one corner, and poke a small stick through one corner to hold them in place. Place them strategically around your garden in the afternoon or evening. In the morning check, and collect any slug filled traps. You should find the slimy guys hiding on the bottom or in between the pages. You can toss the traps, slugs and all--in the wood stove, in a bucket of water, or place the traps on something solid and stomp them flat and throw them in the compost pile. Those of you who keep poultry, other birds, or who have pet reptiles and amphibians can see if your animals will enjoy a slug snack. Ducks and chickens usually love them, but not all birds do. I once gave some slugs to a neighbor’s emu and got them spit right back in my face. You should have seen the look on that birds face. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Time to Plant Outside:

Cabbage, kale, mustards, collards, lettuce, corn salad, arugula, endive, escarole, and many other tasty and healthful “greens” can be planted right now, either from seeds or starts. Keep in mind, that all plants referred to as greens may not actually be green colored; however, the part most often consumed is the leaves. One of my new favorites has such dark leaves that they are sometimes described as black.

Homegrown cabbage!  Imperfect but oh so crisp and tasty.

Tuscan Kale is also called dinosaur kale and black kale. It has long narrow crinkly leaves, grows into a large striking plant up to three or four feet tall, and can live for several years. It can be planted along the edges of the vegetable garden or in mixed perennial borders. Check your local nurseries or favorite catalogs for starts and seeds. Once you get some Tuscan Kale going, you will be glad you did. Not only are the leaves attractive and tasty, the immature flower heads are absolutely the best. Snap them off with a couple inches of the thick juicy stem and the small terminal leaves. If you take a bite from the stem end, you are going to have problems getting them into the kitchen, they are that good. Imagine some sweet, tender, and juicy broccoli and you have a pretty good idea what Tuscan kale “bolts” are all about.

Tuscan kale can be started indoors or out, right now. It can take a light frost or even a sprinkling of snow, but if your ground is frozen or covered in a deep snow, either wait for spring or get it started inside. If you live above the snow line, you might want to keep one Tuscan kale plant in a large container, so you can shelter it over the winter and hope for those delicious bolting flower heads next spring.

Start Summer Veggies Indoors:

Winter squash, watermelons, edible and ornamental gourds, as well as eggplants and tomatoes can be started indoors this month. They will need a warm bright window, or special lights and a heating mat to thrive. If starting seeds indoors is not your idea of a good time, be reassured that our local nurseries will be stocked with all kinds of vegetable plants in the next few months.

Produce in the Kitchen

Tuscan Kale is the star in my garden right now, the dark green leaves add lots of flavor to soups, stews, and one of my favorite dishes—Dirty Rice. Any greens that you happen to have growing can be used; red or green cabbage leaves, mustard, collards, and spinach are all likely to be found in the garden this time of year, and they will work just fine. First, put half a cup of black beans in a medium sized sauce pan or a rice cooker with two cups of water. Bring to a boil and then simmer the beans for about two hours, checking frequently and adding more water if necessary. Then add a cup of brown rice, a sliced carrot or two, some diced onion, and one or two large or several small diced leaves from Tuscan kale or other greens. Add two more cups of water, any seasonings you are hankering for, and let it cook for another hour, checking occasionally. If you have a rice cooker of an old fashioned pot with a double decker steamer basket, add some more veggies and/or shrimp to the basket and check frequently. Remove the veggies as they become tender. The dirty rice is ready to serve as soon as the rice is tender.

For Rose Lovers

“Complete Roses” from the Creative Homeowner series might be just the book you have been waiting for. Lavishly illustrated from the front cover through nearly every page of the text, you are sure to find the perfect rose for that certain corner of your landscape. Unlike most rose tomes, this one advocates natural and nontoxic solutions for rose problems. You will find chapters on: types and uses of roses, how to improve your soil, selecting the right rose for your needs, companion plants for roses, caring for roses, controlling pests and disease, propagating your rose plants, as well as a gallery of easy care roses. The gallery includes the history of the various groups of roses, so even if you have plenty and are expert in their care, you might learn some great stories about where they originated and who developed them. “Complete Roses” would make a great coffee table book or a great gift; available from most on-line book sellers or by request from your favorite book stores. “Complete Roses,” by Field Roebuck, published by Creative Homeowner, 2007, ISBN 978-1-58011-372-4.

~~~~

If you enjoy this article and want to see the one for April, add me on facebook, Harvest McCampbell, and give me a reminder near the end of March. Questions, comments, and tips are always welcome.

Compost Hole Method, Part 3

Please see Compost Hole Method, Part 1. if you haven't already.

Step 11. Plant your seeds (or starts).










Step 11. Continued: cover the seeds with soil, but not too much. Many seeds need light to germinate.















Gently smooth the soil.












Step 12, optional: Plant sticks to mark the spot and to discourage cats and birds.
















Step 13: Make plant labels. Many types of plastic containers lend them selves well to this task.

















Label with the variety and the date.





Step 13. Water gently and make an effort to keep evenly moist, but not soggy.












And wait for your seeds to start growing.

Here are some tiny ruby red card seedlings, they will grow up to resemble the plants in Part 1.









To the right are baby giant red Japanese mustard seedlings. Mature plants are also pictured in Part 1.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in comments, or better yet, add me as a friend on facebook. I have a number of gardening photo albums there that you may find interesting.

If you have a favorite way to process your kitchen scraps, please feel free to share!




All text and photos Copyrighted, 2011, Harvest McCampbell